The Wolf -Chapter X: So It Goes; Part 2

8.
The first rays of dawn struck her face, and Katy woke up.
Her body was cramped, and she stretched for a full minute before getting up. She wandered into the kitchen and found a coffee pot under the sink, put a filter, some coffee grinds and water in it, and turned it on. She leaned on the counter and waited as the room filled with the smell of coffee, and the sound of boiling water.
She searched in the cabinets for a mug, found one, and set it by the pot.
Katy wandered into the living room, looking around at this place that had been her infrequent hangout like something from another world. Not a whole lot had changed here since her stoner days, even the occupant and ex-lover.
She squirmed at the thought of how desperate she’d been back then.

Had it crossed her mind that she was breaking the law? That what she was doing was illegal enough to get her imprisoned for a very long time? The thought was distant; so many strange things had happened that the normal consequences did not feel applicable.
Of course it begged the question, what would happen if the police came right then? There was nothing keeping Mike from telling the cops except his copious amounts of hidden weed, and even that was a stretch of an excuse. It was a fifty-fifty chance that the cops would find it.
But still, what about the consequences? She’d been an accessory to murder and was now harboring a killer. It had been self defense, right? Except for the whole arm breaking and punching and skull crushing death thing, and not to mention the eventual burning desecration of their corpses…
Jesus Christ, how had he even done that?
Katy poured herself some coffee and decided to take it black. She took a sip, disgusted but comforted, and walked out into the living room.
From behind the curtains, she could see a silhouette standing on the porch.
Oh shit! she thought to herself as she grabbed the gun and made her way to the front door. She counted to three and opened it up, then jumped out and aimed for the head-
-and then she sighed and lowered the gun, grabbing her chest. She said, “What the fuck!”
He looked at her, eyebrows raised. Between his middle and index fingers he clutched a lit cigarette. “Good morning to you, too,” he said.
Katy laughed, putting the gun under her belt.
“I didn’t know you smoked, Adrian,” she said with a smile.
“Old habits die hard,” he said.
“So, okay, how the fuck are you-”
And then there came the sound of a police siren, and Katy pulled out her gun.
“Oh shit!” she yelled, “Mike must’ve ratted us out!”
“Katy, put the gun away,” Adrian said dismissively.
“What are you, kidding? They’re gonna come out guns blazing, Mike will have told them we’re armed!”
“Just, Katy-”
A police car appeared over the hill speeding towards them, and as Katy made to turn the gun in that direction, Adrian grabbed her hand and turned her towards him, then put his other arm around her shoulder and drew her into a deep kiss.
She struggled against it for a moment, and then the car passed them by.
Adrian let her go, and Katy just stared at him.
“What the fuck, what if they had been coming after us?”
Adrian smiled. “That’s not going to happen, trust me. Dade’s a very good friend for us to have right now. Hey, is that coffee?”
He walked back inside, and Katy was still left flabbergasted.
She followed him in, locking the door behind her.
“Okay so, I need you to do me a favor here,” she said. “I need you to explain to me exactly what’s going on right now, because I’ve been playing second man for the past day or so and it’s really starting to fuck with my brain. Yesterday you were bleeding on the floor, stabbed enough times to make a ‘Nam man wince, and now you’re smoking cigs on the porch and drinking coffee like you weren’t just halfway past dead a few hours ago. How the hell is that even possible?!”
Adrian shrugged. “Dade fixed me, I guess.”
“He-” Katy rubbed her head, “Okay, fine, I’ll take that. I don’t see how, but in the history of crazy fucked up nonsensical things to have happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, I’d say you getting healed with a rock and a magnet are pretty low on the list.”
“A rock?” Adrian asked, drinking his coffee. “Wow, that really doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t!” Katy shook her head. “And yesterday, what you did to those two guys! What the hell was that all about?”
Adrian took a considerably longer sip of his coffee.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They were trying to hurt you so I made sure that wouldn’t happen. I don’t remember the specifics.”
Katy gave a dry laugh. “Well I sure as shit remember the specifics, Adrian! You crushed one guy’s arm into noodle, punched the other guy’s arm clean off, and then as a finisher you turned both their skulls into a fine red mush! And then you set the whole place on fire by snapping your fingers, just for shits and giggles.”
Adrian said, “Wow, really?” He took another sip. “Guess I’ve still got it.”
“Still got it? Still got what?!”
Adrian shrugged.
“AGGHHH!” Katy screamed, throwing her arms into the air. She turned on him again, pointing her finger. “That’s the kind of shit that has to stop. This wink-wink-nudge-nudge “I know what I’m talking about” crap that leaves me ENTIRELY clueless as to what the blazing blue fuck is going on in your brain!” She ran her hand through her hair and sighed, saying, “I’m still really pissed at you, by the way. Calling me in the middle of the night to break up with me is one thing, but you could have at least kept the gratuitous foreplay until after you hung up. I have done a lot of shit that I am not proud of, and I have done a lot of men that I am not proud of, but Jesus fucking Christ, that is by far the most whole-heartedly bullshit fucked up thing that any guy has ever done to me.”
Adrian was silent. Katy stared at him expectantly.
“Well?” she said, shaking her head. “You have anything to say?”
He took a breath and said, “It’s been a weird month.”
Katy sighed. “I’m glad you’re alive, Adrian. And despite everything, I still care about you. I’m not saying I forgive you, I’m saying I’m willing to if you give me a reason. And a damned good one at that.”
Adrian nodded. They stood in silence for a few moments.
Katy said, “Can you pass me one of those smokes?”
“I didn’t know you were in the habit,” Adrian said, passing the pack.
She shrugged. “Like you say, they die hard.”
They leaned against the kitchen counter, and Adrian lit her cigarette. She took a deep breath of it, exhaled, and said,
“You’re not Adrian, are you?”
He smiled. “What gave it away?”
“You have people skills. And you actually know what’s going on. By the way, that kissing me on the porch thing? Really hot.”
He laughed, but didn’t say anything.
Eventually he asked, “So when did you start smoking?”
“Fifth grade. My sister’s Lolita side got me into it, among other things.”
He scratched his ear and said, “Wait a second, I thought you said you lied about your sister’s MPD?”
Katy looked at him curiously, then looked out at the wall. “Did I?” She shook her head, and then snapped her fingers. “Oh! Fuck. Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Is…that something you do often?”
“What?”
“Lie, and forget?”
She shrugged. “I have issues with people knowing about my personal life.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“My personal life or my issues?”
“Whichever.”
She shrugged. “I’m too frazzled to get into either right now.” Katy took a long drag on her cigarette, then looked at it and said, “So when did you get into the habit?”
“1973. And I guess 1934, but that was different. Everyone smoked back then.”
Katy did not move for a moment, then turned and said, “You’re fucking with me, right? Because all of this,” she said, waving her hands in front of her, “is already more than enough to blow my mind into bug juice.”
“If only I was,” he said.
Katy shook her head, then walked away. “Holy fuck, Adrian!” Then she turned around and said, “Er, wait, that’s not your name, is it?”
“Akashi.”
Katy dropped her cigarette, then blinked. “Why does that sound familiar?”
He shrugged and watched as she picked it back up.
“Akashi,” she said. “So I take it you haven’t always been in Adrian’s head?”
He smiled. “I was alive in my own body for a very long series of lives before I wound up here.”
“In your own body as in, like, a normal human being?”
“Yup.”
She shook her head. “So how does the whole werewolf thing make sense?”
“That’s a hard one to explain.”
“But you do know the answer, right?”
“At least half of it, yes.”
“Care to fill me in?”
Akashi said, “So far as I understand, I’ve only had two really important lives. My first one, and this one.”
Katy waited for more, but nothing came. “So…?”
“I can only assume there’s a connection between the two. All the previous lives feel like…filler. The details come in brief spurts which have little substance, and they all seem rather pointless. But my first life…the one where I was Akashi, that one comes to me in very vivid detail. I don’t remember all of it, though.”
“Why wouldn’t you remember all of it?”
He shrugged, “I can only guess that’s the other half of the answer.”
Katy put out her cigarette. “I really hope this is a bad dream. I mean, shit like this doesn’t happen to people. It’s fiction. Movie stuff, you know? I mean if you were, like, Lon Chaney, Jr. over here, telling me about werewolves and past lives and whatever, I’d be at least a little more inclined to say, yeah, okay, I guess that makes sense. But you’re just some guy. And I mean, you look like Adrian. That’s just fucked up. He’s the guy I know, he’s the one I fell in love with. I thought when my sister died that I wouldn’t have to deal with crap like this anymore. I mean, fuck, she had a good six established personalities. You know how hard it is to tell them apart? Same voice, same face…” Katy looked at Akashi and said, “Different eyes, though. That was the main thing. Not different colors necessarily, just… a different look. Looking at you, I’d swear you have red eyes. But they’re brown, just like Adrian’s. And I can look at you and tell myself, yes, those are brown eyes. But I look away, and it just seems like… a glint. A red glint. And I have to do a double take and check and make sure.”
Akashi watched her for a few moments, wanting to reach out and touch her face. But he blinked, and he looked away.
He asked, “How did your sister die?”
Katy stammered. “Uh, well… I guess, the short story would be she killed herself.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It was like three years ago. Cut her wrists with a…thing, a piece of metal. Fuck, something she found on the street. When we were girls, she used to tell me that living in her world was like having six sets of eyes, each skewed from a different angle. She knew that it was her mind, that she was the dominant personality and that the others were fragments that, I guess, broke off from her. But then one of the other ones would take over, and it was like putting on a mask and looking through one of the other sets of eyes. She knew she was her… she knew everything that she did before. But it was like…bits and pieces were selectively blocked out. She could recollect them if she wanted to, but she never did. That was the whole point, see? Each personality only remembered what it needed to. Each one took her life and fabricated from it the reality that it wanted to believe in. And whenever one of the other ones was in control, I could see her. Trapped behind the mask. Stuck inside this carousel in her mind. She’d wake up screaming some nights because of nightmares she described like a…broken mirror coming back together. She could see all the fragments and then, slowly, they focused together, and when it was all done she saw who she really was. That terrified her, you know? She was so scared of her identity that she tore herself apart to hide from it. When we were girls it was almost funny, you know? We just played around and she called herself crazy and we would laugh about it. It was like a game. It was like being a part of something… It was a secret between us, right? But as we got older she got worse… the personalities started getting angry, and… once she had a seizure. At the hospital I asked her what happened, and she told me that a few of the personalities got into a fight. And that one of them was killed. Can you imagine that? I mean, fuck. This was all in her head. No doctor could find a difference in the physical makeup of her brain, no drug prescribed could truly get rid of the personalities. They got into a fight, and one of them died. A piece of her was destroyed because the other pieces got angry. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. And I guess that got the better of her. Too much fighting on both sides… I mean, we couldn’t keep her condition a secret forever, you know? Eventually it became a problem and our parents didn’t really understand it. They never really tried to. They just made the doctors throw drugs at her and lock her up and try…things. When your family throws you out, and your own brain is fighting itself for dominance, I mean… I understand why she did it, I guess. I probably would have too.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek and looked at the cold cup of coffee on the counter, then laughed. “I’m sorry, you didn’t ask me to babble on like this. There’s more important things to worry about than my stupid-”
Akashi reached out and held her chin, turning her face towards him. He set his forehead against hers and kissed her lips, and she closed her eyes and began to cry. When he pulled back, she buried her face into his shoulder, sobbing. He held her in his arms, and felt like crying himself.
He may have done just that.

9.
“We know where they are,” Billy said into his phone.
“Don’t make contact,” Abraham said.
“But I can get him, Abe!”
“No, William, you can’t! He has shown us that he means business. We need to keep our distance. Watch him, keep tabs on everything they do. If the girl goes off on her own, by all means, pick her up and bring her here. But don’t put any more of our people in danger.”
“We don’t even know what he did to ‘em, Abe! Feckin’, the guy coulda had the jump on ‘em!”
“How many encounters had those men been in, William? How many people had they killed for us before? No one gets the jump on them. Whatever he did was through brute force and brute force alone. We have to assume that he is capable of a great deal.”
“Dammit, Abe, you’re jumpin’ at shadows here! This guy lost so much blood, he should be dead. Prolly is! He didn’ do nothin’ to those guys, it was that girl, and maybe somebody else.”
“You think she killed those men? You think a human took out two werewolves that were each twice her size? You’re angry and you’re not thinking straight-”
“You’re god-damned feckin’ right I’m angry! Those guys have been with me for years, and I had to find their feckin’ burned up bodies in the wreck a’ that shed! They was mangled before they was burned, Abe! She feckin’ tortured ‘em! Put their heads under a god damned car!”
“William, you have your orders! Do not take this into your hands. We need to control the situation, and I can’t do that if you go in there and cause a riot!”
“It ain’t gonna be no riot,” Billy said, sneering, “it’s gonna be fuckin’ murder!”
He threw the phone onto the ground and stomped it, then spat on its sizzling remains. He looked at his three friends and felt a pang of anger that two were missing from the lineup. More fuel for the fire.
“Alright!” he said, biting his lip. “I’m feckin’ pissed! Abe don’t got no feckin’ idea what he’s doin, and tha’s just fine! We’re gonna go in there and fucking kill those sonsabitches in there, for killin the boss’s sister, and for killin our friends! This shit ain’t gonna stand!”
The others yelled their agreement, and Billy pulled out his gun, leading the group away from the warehouse. Behind them, strapped to a chair, was Mike, his skin flayed off, his neck torn open.
Billy cracked his neck as he got into his car, and waited for the others to get in. The stoner’s house was fifteen minutes away.
Time to blow some heads off.

10.
There was a knock at the door, and Katy and Akashi exchanged a worried glance. She pulled out the gun, and he rolled his eyes.
He walked towards the door and checked the peephole, then smiled.
“It’s Dade.”
Akashi unlocked it and opened it up, and Dade almost screamed when he saw him standing there.
“Oh my gods!” he said, a smile dawning on his face. “It worked!”
“You’re damn right it did!” Akashi said, bringing Dade into a hug, patting his back. “You saved my ass. I knew you would.”
He pulled Dade into the house and closed the door, locking it up once more.
“So what’s going on?” he asked.
Dade shook his head. “A lot. Too much. You have stirred the bloody ant pile, my friend.”
Akashi shrugged, “I’m good at that. You seem together.”
“I am when I need to be,” Dade said. “I don’t think I’ve been this cognizant in months. It’s going to be a bitch when all this is over.”
He walked over to the couch, and Akashi cleared his throat.
“Do you think it ever will be over?”
Dade looked up at him, a confused look on his face. “Everything ends eventually.”
He then looked back down at the table, nodding. “I have a plan. Abraham’s resources are stretched really thin right now, and for the moment he’s too proud to call on the Circle’s help.”
Katy interrupted. “The Circle?”
Dade said, “Big scary social group, likes to kill people and experiment on them and do nasty things.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, for the time being he’s not going in for help from them. Which is good. Now he has people watching all the main roads, making sure you don’t go anywhere he doesn’t know. When Billy found those guys you killed last night, oh man, he was pissed. But at least Abraham is keeping a cool head. He’s trying to make sure no one else gets hurt. Well, no one he likes.”
“So what needs to happen?” Akashi asked.
“Well, we need to get you two out of the city. As far away as possible. Whatever they want you for, it isn’t good.”
Akashi shook his head. “No.”
“No?”
“I can’t run away from this.”
Dade rubbed his forehead, “No, you don’t understand. They’ll kill Katy. They will hurt you. They will do whatever they have to do get what you know, or what you’re capable of, or… whatever it is that makes you so damned important. You have to get away from here.”
Akashi said, “I’m all for getting Katy out of here, somehow. But you don’t understand. This is the way things were always going to happen. I’m here, now, and I can’t just run away from this. It’s… destiny.”
“Destiny?” Dade said, throwing up his hands. “Destiny is a joke! You don’t even know what destiny is!”
“And you do?”
Dade almost said something, but went silent.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dade said. “You’re being an idiot. This isn’t about anything other than surviving.”
“And if I run, what then? I hide? This will catch up to me eventually, Dade.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
Akashi leaned forward, “Because I should be dead. I’m here, now, and there’s a reason. I’m not alive so I can hide, I wasn’t put in this body so I could cower. I am here to do something, Dade. Just like you said.”
Dade looked at him for a moment, then sat back. “Holy fuck. Oh my gods. You’re not Adrian, are you? You’re… Oh my gods!” He smiled widely and shook his head. “You took control of his body when Adrian…”
His smile dimmed, and he said, “How is he?”
Akashi shook his head. “Asleep. Or comatose. Not dead, but not much better than.”
Katy uncrossed her arms and said, “What? Adrian’s not… what?”
“He almost died. So close he may have been fooled into believing he is dead. And that along with the physical pain, I mean… have you ever had an acid burn?”
Katy shook her head.
“Well, it doesn’t feel nice. And silver to a werewolf is worse.”
Dade nodded in agreement.
“No one should be able to survive being stabbed that many times in general, let alone with your own personal kryptonite.”
“Listen,” Dade said. “We can discuss this at length some other time, but… what’s your name?”
“Akashi.”
Dade’s eyes narrowed. “Oh wow. That is a very heavy name. Yeah okay, I definitely see why they want you.”
“What is he talking about?” Katy asked.
“He can see the future,” Akashi said.
“No, I can’t,” said Dade.
“That’s what you told Adrian the other day.”
“No, I said, I can see the future in a nutshell. It’s more complicated than that. I can see… strands of it. Pieces of it. Based on the lines of people’s lives. And Katy, names carry weight. They don’t necessary change who you are going to be, but they affect it just the same. Akashi is the kind of name you only hear whispered in hushed tones. Did it sound familiar to you when you first heard it?”
“Yeah, but-”
“Adrian had the same reaction when I told him,” Akashi said.
“Right,” Dade said. “Holy shit, Akashi. Akashi.” He couldn’t help but smile. “People know your name, but they don’t realize it. You know what that means? You’re going to change the world. You’re going to change everything.”
“Well, I don’t think-” Akashi began.
The lights went out. They sat in silence for a moment, looking up at the ceiling.
“Why did we just lose power?” Katy asked.
Dade said, “Maybe it’s just a brown out or something, I don’t-”
Akashi stood up and walked towards the door.
“Both of you need to hide.”
“What?” Katy said. “But-”
“Now.”
The finality in his tone was palpable. They rushed out of the room and hid.

Akashi cracked his knuckles and waited.
There was a knock at the door, and Akashi did not move.
“Hello, Michael? Did you lose power too?”
An old woman’s voice.
“I think the whole block is down. Are you home?”
Akashi didn’t budge. Eventually whoever was at the door walked away.
And then he winced, and said, “Fuck.”
Billy came out of the hallway with a gun against Katy’s head. The other two were holding Dade. He threw Katy onto the floor and turned the gun on Dade.
“You feckin’ piece of shit! You traitorin’ little son of a-”
“Don’t play games with me, Billy,” Akashi said. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Yeah? Then why did you send yer friends into the room we broke into?”
“Ask them why they went that direction. I didn’t point them there.”
Billy spat. “You and this piece a shit were made for each other. Goin’ on about free choice and all that. Bullshit!”
“You’re not going to hurt her,” Akashi said.”
“Yeah?” Billy smiled, then kicked her in the side. “Look at that! I’m hurtin’ her, doc!”
Akashi’s hands balled up into fists.
He grabbed Katy by the shoulder and she yelped, and he said, “Ohh, wha’s this?” He threw her against the couch and pulled the shoulder off her shirt, finding the bandaged shot wound from the night before.
“Look at that!” He looked around at the others, “Looks like one of our fellas left her a scar!” He turned back to Katy, “Yeah, well, get feckin used to it ya whore, there’s plenty more where that came from.” Billy pushed his fingers into the wound, and she yelled through her teeth.
Akashi took a step towards them, and Billy put the gun against Katy’s leg and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening crash, and Katy screamed.
“Stop this right now, Billy!” Akashi screamed.
“You want it to stop? You want me to let her go? Shoulda fuckin thought a that before you two killed my guys! Shoulda fuckin thought a that before you let this bitch fuckin torture em and crus their heads in!” He screamed this last part, and a tear ran down his cheek. “Fuck you and your stupid life, ah! How about that?”
He turned towards Dade and kicked him in the crotch, and he heaved forward.
Akashi’s fists were trembling.
“I’m going to destroy you,” he said.
“Ohhhh!” Billy said, laughing. He jauntered up to Akashi and said, “Yeah, big man, ah? Fuckin badass, right? Well let me tell you somethin’, badass. While you was out in the wild givin’ Bambi a stainless steel enema, I was on the streets gettin’ shot at and fightin’ for my life. While you was out there pissin’ on trees and shit, I was takin’ down fellas twice your size, and I wasn’t even sixteen. You ain’t no fuckin badass, you’re just some asshole the boss got a hardon for cause his money tells him you important. Well let me tell you a few things, mick! You ain’t important. You ain’t important! You’re gonna be as dead as the crazy fuck that got you into this mess, and ain’t no one gonna remember your name. Adrian. What the fuck kinda name is that, anyway?”
“Not mine,” Akashi said.
Billy shook his head. “What? What the fuck does-”
And then the realization dawned on him, and as Akashi made to grab him, Billy kicked him in the stomach and sent him to the ground, then put his gun against Katy’s head. He nodded towards the other two, and they aimed for Dade’s head too.
“So you’re him, then. So you’re the fuckwit them Circle bastards want to talk to. Well they ain’t gonna talk to you. I don’t give a good god damn who you are, you killed two of my friends! You ain’t living through that, ya understand?”
Akashi pulled himself up, winded and feeling at least one of his wounds bleeding again.
“So here’s what I’m gonna do,” Billy said, waving his gun. “I’ma shoot this bitch, then I’ma go over and put a few bullets in that fuckhole, and you know what? I’m not gonna kill you. I’m gonna cut your damned legs and arms off, oh yeah, sure thing. But I’ma make damn sure you don’t die. I’ll let the boss talk to you, and get whatever the fuck he wants outta ya. All the better for me, right? Whatever hurts you most, you piece a shit, that’s what I want.”
“You know what I want?” Akashi said.
Billy rolled his eyes. “Okay, what’s this? Some kinda dramatic time waster or something? You ain’t got shit on me pal.”
Akashi smiled and nodded towards Katy.
Billy looked at her in time to see the gun she was cradling out of sight, and she pulled the trigger. The bullet went into his gut, and time seemed to go to a crawl.
The two men aimed their guns at Akashi and fired.
Billy pointed his gun at Katy’s head and fired.
And then there was silence.
Billy was on the floor, inching away from the couch, pointing his gun at Akashi.
“What the feck are you doing?!”
Akashi’s arms were thrown out. Hovering front of him were three spinning bullets. Not an inch from Katy’s head, there was another.
She had winced, and she opened her eyes and screamed, “Holy god!” and moved out of its trajectory. And then she stared at it.
“What the fuck?” she said absentmindedly.
Akashi closed his left hand, and the bullet aimed at Katy suddenly vanished, and there was a hole through the couch. He took a few steps to the right and closed his other hand, and the bullets finished their paths without harm.
Billy was wide eyed, pulling the trigger on his gun endlessly with no result. The others were looking at theirs, checking them for a jam or something else out of place, but finding nothing.
Akashi kneeled down next Billy, and he said, “Your eyes… your eyes are red! What the fuck?! What is-”
“Shut up.”
Billy closed his mouth.
Akashi leaned close to Billy’s head and whispered, “I have watched the lives of mortals rise and fall over hundreds of thousands of years. I have seen cosmic events so immense they could not be witnessed in a single lifetime. I have been into the hearts of gods and drank from the very waters of life. You are a mosquito. You are nothing. And you’ve threatened the only person alive I still care about.”
He grabbed Billy by the throat and lifted him up. His head touched the ceiling.
“What do they want from me?!” he screamed.
“I don’t know!”
“You know something,” Akashi said. “I can feel it.”
“I know what it is,” Dade said, quivering. “I found it.”
Akashi smiled and nodded. “Alright then. Dade, please do me a favor and take Katy out of the room. She’s already seen too much.”
Dade scrambled to his feet and grabbed Katy. Both of them looked at Akashi fearfully, and as Dade pulled her behind out of the room, she couldn’t look away from him.
Akashi dropped Billy. He hit the carpet and rolled onto his back, then shuffled over to where the other two men stood, slack jawed and very confused.
Akashi said, “I am going to-”
And then there was a shattering of glass, and Akashi looked away.
Sitting on the floor was a small black cylinder. He stared at it for a moment, confused.
And then it exploded, and he went blind. He thrashed backwards and felt himself being thrown to the ground. Someone was putting handcuffs on him, and then something was drawn over his head. He heard shouts, and then there was a blow to his head, and Akashi lost consciousness.

The Wolf -Chapter X: So It Goes; Part 1

X: So It Goes

Abraham tapped his desk and sighed.
“I’m taking care of it,” he said into the phone cradled in his shoulder.
“No, you’re not,” a voice spoke on the other end. “You’re playing a game, which is what you’ve been doing from the beginning.”
“I-”
“Don’t act like we haven’t been watching you every second of every day for the past twelve years. You aren’t doing your job.”
“I’m trying a new approach, and until today it was going perfectly-”
“You tried a new approach without permission from me or anyone representing me. You went below the chain of command and did something that may very well have destroyed everything. I’m sending my men.”
Abraham sat up in his chair. “No, you don’t need to do that. I-”
The door to his office opened and Billy rushed in.
“Abe, we have a problem.”
“I’m busy right now, William, please-”
“Evita’s dead.”
Abraham’s tapping ceased. He starred at Billy for a long moment, and Billy continued.
“We foun’ her at Adrian’s place. Stabbed through the bottom o’ the chin. There’s a feckin metric shit ton of blood, and it ain’t all hers. I think she jumped him first, and he fought back.”
“Hello?” the voice spoke through the phone, “Are you still there, Abraham?”
He leaned back in his chair and turned towards the wall. “Yes, I’m still here.”
“Has your sister turned up?”
Abraham’s eyes narrowed. He spoke with grave seriousness. “You know the answer to that question.”
A laugh.
Abraham looked back at Billy. “What about Adrian?”
“Blood trail looks like he dragged hisself outta the house and into his car, after that I ain’t got a feckin clue.”
The voice said, “But you do, don’t you Abraham? Give me the word, and my men will be after him in a heartbeat.”
“Boss, what do you want me to do?” Billy asked.
Abraham held a finger up to his doorman, then said into the phone, “I have this. On my own. I don’t need your help and I never will.”
“Whatever you say.”
The line went dead.
Abraham hung up the phone, and ran his hands through his hair. Finally he screamed, and slammed his fists onto his desk. He breathed for a few moments, then sighed. He stood calmly, and walked over to Billy.
He put a hand on his shoulder and said confidingly, “Get a few guys over to the girl’s house. Maybe he’s there, maybe he isn’t. Either way, I want her under my thumb, now. She’s the only link we have to him.”
Billy nodded. “And after that?”
“Where is my sister’s… where is the body?”
“Right where we found it, sir.”
Abraham twitched. “Gather everyone up, arrange for nonessentials to be sent home. Set up a perimeter around the Midnight. Grab five of your best men, go and get my sister. Bring her back here.”
Billy said nothing.
“Snap to it,” Abraham said, staring the man in the eyes.
He nodded, and left the office.

2.
Punch. Punch.
The seventy pound bag swung backwards, and Katy arched her arm and sent it into a well worn dent in the wall. It’s surface was flecked with fist-shaped blood splatters, and she realized she hadn’t wrapped her hands.
Good.
Upstairs, the doorbell rang. Katy ignored it.
On her computer, Metallica was singing about the thing that should not be. Katy was stewing in her anger, and felt entirely justified in doing so.
She punched the bag three more times, each time imagining Adrian’s face becoming more and more bruised. It made her smile despite herself.
The doorbell rang again, and she punched the bag dismissively. “Fine, I’m coming!” she yelled. She shook her hand and muttered a curse.
She grumbled as she mounted the stairs and stepped onto the first floor of her house. She paced to the door, realizing that she was covered in sweat and probably smelled like shit.
Katy brushed her hair back and peeked through the visor. Whoever it was was too close to see.
She opened the door.
Adrian was leaning against the frame of her doorway, looking haggard and beset. Katy had to fight the urge to punch him straight away.
“You!” she exclaimed. “What in the blueberry ball-licking motherfuck do you think you’re…”
Her voice trailed off as her eyes more scrupulously took in the man before her, and she realized that he was bleeding rather profusely.
“Oh my god…” she said, “what happened?”
Adrian looked up at her, like someone barely awake, and said, “Uhhh…” before falling face first into her house. She caught him, but was nearly knocked over herself by the dead weight of him. Suddenly all she cared about was what the hell had happened to her man, and who she had to curbstomp for it.
She felt a twinge of shame at the immediacy of the thought. But pride as well.
Katy pulled him inside and closed the door and locked it by the bolt. Adrian was muttering incoherently, and his arms and legs were shivering. She dragged him into the living room and laid him on the couch. He looked up at her again as if out of a dream, and reached out a hand to her.
In it was clenched a small cell phone.
“Call Dade,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“What happened to you?” she asked, not knowing what else to say.
“Call…Dade…” he said as his arm fell limp and the phone dropped to the floor. Katy’s heart nearly stopped because he looked so dead. She checked his wrist, however, and found that his heart was still beating.
Barely.
Katy picked up the phone and rolled it between her hands. She looked at Adrian, confused and scared and angry. Maybe Dade would have some answers?
She found his listing in the phone, and dialed the number.

3.
“Adrian?” a voice answered.
“Dade?” Katy asked in return.
There was silence for a moment, and then a whisper, “Where is he?”
“Here. What the hell is going on?”
“What’s his condition?”
Katy blinked. “Fucking stabbed? Bleeding out his everywhere? I’m not a fucking doctor!”
“Okay, alright, calm down. Is he breathing?”
She bit on her tongue to keep from screaming at him. “Yes.”
“Okay. Make sure he…keeps doing that.”
“Right. Okay. Any more advice? Or maybe you could tell me what the fuck is going on right now? Because my mind is pretty thoroughly blown at the moment, considering-”
“I can’t- I can’t get into that right now. There’s… hold on.”
The other end went silent, and Katy heard some mumblings.
And then, “Listen, you need to get Adrian and get out of your house, now.”
“What?”
“People are literally on their way to your house at this very second. I don’t know how long they’ve been on the road, but you need to hurry.”
Katy glanced around the room and went for her purse and her keys.
“Should I take him to a hospital, or-”
“No, that’s the first place they’ll look. Go somewhere that you know is safe and stay low. Keep in touch with me, I’ll be there as soon as I can break away from-”
Dade went silent again, then said, “I have to go,” and hung up.
Katy resisted the urge to throw the phone at the wall.
She walked over to Adrian and put her arm around his shoulder and lifted him up, and he let out a moan of pain.
“Alright, sleeping beauty,” she said, “time to get the hell out of Dodge.”
And just as Katy got Adrian up onto his feet, his weight significantly stable over hers, she glanced out the front window.
Two very large, very strong looking men were inspecting her car. One of them pulled out a switchblade and proceeded to cut her tires.
The other pulled out a frighteningly large pistol.
And the two of them made their way up her sidewalk and towards her front door.
The line of thought that ran through Katy’s mind and she moved to go out the back way as fast as she could was essentially a single, unending line of oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.
The doorbell rang just as she turned the corner into the kitchen. Katy yanked the screen door open, kicked the back door out, then closed it behind her when they got into the yard.
Not a second later, she heard the front door of her house being kicked in.
There was an exterior garage with a door facing the back of the house, and she moved towards it as fast as she could.
She fumbled her keys as the men searched her house, and she tried very hard not to look over her shoulder to see if they were coming or not.
Katy got the door open and pushed herself in, and got the door closed just as one of the men looked into the backyard through the blinds.

4.
Katy set Adrian, still muttering in a dream state, against a work bench, then proceeded to rip the tarp off a motorcycle. She flipped through her keys and realized that the bike’s was not on her ring. It was in the garage somewhere, and she rifled through buckets and toolboxes until she found it hanging on a nail in the wall.
As she felt the urge to face-palm, the handle turned, and the door pushed inwards, and she felt like an idiot for not locking it.
Without a second’s hesitation, Katy threw herself against the door, catching one of the thug’s fingers in the doorway. He shouted in surprise and then pain, and as Katy tried to lock the door, there was a deafening explosion and a new source of light, and she realized that a hole had been blown through the door about the size of a silver dollar, and she thought, Holy fuck, that could have been my head!
And then Katy was thrown away from the door, and she landed on the floor and hit her chin on the concrete. The force of the impact reverberated through her skull, and for a few seconds she was struck with vertigo.
And then her hair was grabbed by the fistful, and she was yanked up off the floor, and before anything else she threw a punch at the man who had her, who took it in his cheek and stumbled backwards, letting her go. She made to punch again, but suddenly there was a gun barrel in her face.
Katy’s hand grabbed a crowbar laying on a shelf and swung it at the hand that held the gun. The force of it knocked the gun out of his hands, but not before his finger pulled the trigger and put a bullet through her shoulder. Katy yelled., and raised the crowbar up above her head, then went to Adrian.
“Alright, everybody just fucking stop!” she screamed.
The two men, significantly dazed by the pain inflicted by a woman so much smaller than them, stopped. But they wouldn’t stay so for long.
“I’ll kill him. He’s who you want, right? I’ll fucking kill him, and then where will you be?”
The gunman held out his injured hand and raised an eyebrow. “Now sugar, you best calm down.”
The man with the knife was smiling from ear to ear.
“You best tell your friend with the shank here to wipe that fucking grin off his face before I turn his balls into a goddamn shish kebob.”
The gunman took a step towards her, and Katy knew he was testing the waters. She’d hoped there would be more time between then and this, but as it was she couldn’t do anything to hurt Adrian, and it would be a matter of seconds before they knew this as well as she did.
And then the man with the knife grabbed an old empty coke bottle and threw it at her, and it shattered on her temple. She stumbled backwards, blinded and dazed, and then felt the crowbar wrent from her hands, and then her body forced onto the floor.
The man with the knife had his hand on her solar plexus, and was waving his weapon in front of her face. The other man had his gun back, and holstered it back under his shirt.
“Finish her off and help me with the asshole over here,” he said in a businesslike tone.
“Sure thing, boss,” the knife man said. He leaned forward, putting his lips next to her ear, and whispered, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson about sleeping with wolves.”
And then he smiled and lifted up his arm, and Katy saw the arc of his swing through his body language, and knew it would not be a killing stroke, and that it would hurt probably more than anything she had ever felt in her life.
And she flinched as she expected the pound of the fist on her chest, and the penetration of the skin and organs, followed by the spill of warmth onto her skin and shirt.
But it didn’t happen.
Katy opened her eyes and realized the other good had his gun out, but it wasn’t pointed at her.
It was pointed at Adrian.
And his hand had caught this one’s arm in mid swing.
Adrian was kneeled next to her, and he stood up, pulling her would-be assassin up with him.
“Let him go!” the gunman screamed. “Or I’ll shoot her!”
Adrian turned his head towards the gunman, and perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Katy would have sworn that his eyes looked blood red.
And then several impossible things happened in the span of a few seconds.
Without letting go of the one man’s arm, Adrian sent out his hand and punched the gunman in the shoulder, directing his force outwards towards the arm. And there was a terrible crunching splatter noise as the gunman’s arm separated from his torso, and was sent flying towards the wall, where it left a gushing splatter and landed on the floor.
This one immediately fell to the floor, screaming like an animal.
Then the man with the knife, eyes wide with disbelief, shouted something unintelligible that may have been meant as a threat, or a cry for mercy, or nothing at all. But it quickly devolved into a howling shriek as Adrian increased his grip on the man’s arm, and the bone snapped and turned to dust, and the muscle crushed, and the sinews stretched and separated, and the arm that had been thick from years of manual labor was reduced to the width of a PVC pipe, and the lower portion of his arm dangled uselessly from the crumpled bits above.
And then Adrian grabbed this man by the neck, before he had the chance to fall over, and lifted him up into the air -without so much as a grunt of effort, though he was probably three times Adrian’s weight- and walked him over to the struggling, maimed body of his compatriot. He set this one on top of the other like a sandwich, set the one head above the other, put his hand on the man’s temple-
-and they both tried to scream, or to beg, or to make peace with whichever god gave them the most comfort-
-and Adrian pressed down, and the two heads flattened, the skulls cracked like eggs, their brains spilled out onto the floor, their eyes bulged and were sent rolling, and Adrian’s hand stopped a centimeter above the floor.
As Katy saw this, her horror vanished in a wave of disbelief, and she became utterly convinced that this was one very terrible, very vivid nightmare.
And then Adrian turned to look at her, and she saw his glowing eyes, and she saw the blood dripping from his hands, and she remembered seeing those eyes before.
She backed up into the corner, cradling her wounded shoulder, looking at Adrian as though he were a monster. He took a few shambling steps towards her, and suddenly she remembered her panic-
-and then Adrian collapsed at her feet, his head coming to a rest on her knee.
And Katy reached out to touch him, to see if he was alive, and she saw that her hands were shaking. And then she started to cry.

5.
The phone rang once more, and Katy screamed in surprise. She cursed herself, and answered it.
“Where are you?” Dade asked.
“In my fucking shed, trying to deal with this -this situation.”
“You’re still at your house?” he asked, panicked.
“Okay, Dade? It’s been like ten minutes, and Adrian just punched another guy’s arm off. I’m kind of fucking freaked out right now.”
“What? No, nevermind, how soon can you leave?”
Katy stood and grabbed the key off the wall, and said, “Honey, I’m fucking gone.”
She winced, and Dade asked her what was wrong. “I got shot. It’s a shoulder wound, I’ll live. I don’t even know how Adrian is alive, though.”
“Call me back when you find a good place, okay? I can help, just keep yourself up.”
Katy was already working on a makeshift tourniquet. “Yeah, I’ve delt with this kind of shit before.” She hung up.
Katy grabbed Adrian and set him on seat of the bike, then sat in front of him, pulling his arms around her waist.
She eyed the gun on the floor, and decided to pick it up.
One never knows.
As she pulled out of the driveway, Adrian muttered, “Do you care about anything in there?”
Katy gave a laugh. “Not anymore.”
Adrian snapped his fingers, and the building burst into flames.
“Jesus Christ!” she yelled as they drove away. “What the fuck are you smoking back there?”
Adrian laughed at this, but then fell silent. Katy felt his head slump onto her back, and a line of tension ran through her heart. She thought to herself, If you die now, I swear to god I’m going to kick your ass. Just hold on, Adrian.
Hold on.

6.
“Hey, Michael!” Katy shouted. “Open the fucking door!”
There was a brief pause, and then a series of clicks as the slides and bolts were undone. The door opened, and very thin, tired looking young man with mousy hair peeked his head out. He gave a lax smile and said, “Hey baby. Wha’s up?”
Katy rubbed her head. “Yeah so, remember that favor you owe me? I’m cashing in.”
He looked confused. “What?”
Katy peeked inside the house and saw a smoking blunt sitting on the table in an ashtray.
She sighed.
“I need your house. Get the hell out.”
He stared at her, his expression blank. “You’re fucking joking, right? I don’t owe you shit.”
Katy ran a hand through her hair and said, “Look, Mike, I need you to leave and not come back for, like, a week.”
“What, you get busted or some shit? Don’t drag me into your shit.”
He tried to close the door, and Katy pulled out the pistol and put into the stoner’s face.
“Alright Mikey, I tried to be nice, but I think you missed the part where I said you didn’t have a choice in the matter. Your choice is whether you’re in a hotel with a hooker, or hog tied in the fucking basement.”
Mike said, “I ain’t got that kind of money, man.”
Katy snorted, “Christ Mike, I’ve got a gun pointed at your face, just get the hell out of here!”
Mike turned towards an umbrella holder and grabbed at a baseball bat to hit her with. Katy fire the gun, and the handle of the bat splintered off. Mike freaked out and stumbled backwards.
“Holy fuck! Holy fuck, you actually loaded that piece?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“What’s wrong with me is I have to deal with your stoned ass even after I kicked it out on the pavement. Now grab your fucking blunt and your porno mags or whatever the hell else it is you use to keep entertained, and get the shit out of here!”
“Fine! Fine, Jesus, fucking bitch!” He grabbed his scattered things, and Katy kicked him as he went out the door, and she called after him, “And if you tell anyone that I’m here, I swear to god I’m going after your cat first!”
“Pubsy?! But she’s my only friend!”
Katy slammed the door and leaned against it. What an amazing life she had come to lead, threatening old friends and stealing their houses, all for a guy who turn relatively solid skulls into a thick, red-grey jelly.
She shivered at the thought of it.
Katy locked the door in every way available (and there were quite a few), then ran to the back door. Laying on the porch was Adrian, right where she had left him. Katy grabbed him up and dragged him into the house, which smelled like weed and cheetoes, and set him on the couch in the living room. She immediately proceeded to draw the curtains and turn off as many lights as she could. She checked the house for possible entrances and made sure they were as locked as they could be, then went rummaging through Mike’s medicine cabinet.
It was a regular smorgasbord, but nothing of the sort that she needed. But under the sink, just where she had left it, was a first aid kit. Next she found a bowl and filled it with hot water, then put a clean washcloth in it.
She took it and the first aid kit out into the living room and immediately tried to tend to Adrian’s wounds.
His entire abdomen area was yellow, the inches surrounding the various stab wounds was a sickly green, and the immediate vicinity of each entry wound was purple. The blood had crusted into a black slime crusted with fibers from his shirt, and Katy wrung the cloth over the wounds. Adrian let out a moan of pain, and she rubbed his wrist, trying to be comforting. Inside the first aid kit were several pain killers, three quarters of which she gave to Adrian.
The rest she downed herself, because her shoulder was really starting to sting.
When the blood was cleared away and the wounds as cleanly exposed as they could be, Katy applied antiseptic and wrapped him in bandages as best she could.
Again she marveled at the fact that he was breathing at all. By all rights he should be dead -there was no way on earth all his organs were in working order enough to keep his body trucking.
But still he was here, holding on very probably by fewer threads than she cared to know. And not only that, he had saved her life. Done so in an extremely gruesome and scarring way, but the intent was well received at least. The man hadn’t exactly had a lot of options.
She shook her head. No point in trying to make sense of any of this now. It would be a solid week before she could even comprehend it, let alone understand it. And she had a sickening feeling that this was just the beginning.
The sun was setting, and Katy repeated the sterilization process on herself. She felt a great deal of relief (such as it was) that the bullet had passed through her, because she wasn’t anywhere near equipped to pull anything out oh her shoulder. She couldn’t quite get her back wound clean, but still managed to get it bandaged.
Then she sat and stared at the bowl of bloody water, the pieces of gauze and the empty tubes on the floor.
She pulled out the phone and called Dade.

7.
Several hours later, he arrived. He was frazzled and looked exhausted.
“Where is he?” he asked.
Katy pointed to him, and Dade said, “He’s so pale…”
“Yeah.” Katy watched as he went over to Adrian and checked his pulse, and peeked under the now bloodied bandages at the wounds.
“So what’s going on right now?” Katy asked. “How did this happen.”
Dade reached into his pocket and pulled out a quartz crystal the size of his thumb. “Evita went after him with a silver knife. My guess is she asked him to sleep with her and he said no.”
Katy just stared at him, then gave a laugh and said, “Fucking idiot. He should have just slept with her.”
She turned and paced around the living room as Dade ran the stone over Adrian’s gut.
“What are you doing?” Katy asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” he said. “Quartz is a crystal no more special than any rock found on the earth, and it has no healing properties whatsoever.”
Katy shook her head. “So why are you doing that, then?”
“Because,” Dade said, “it’s symbolic.”
Katy decided it would be best to just nod and smile.
Dade then tossed the quartz aside and dug back into his pocket for something else. The quartz was no pitch black. Katy gawked.
Then he took off Adrian’s bandages and pulled out what looked like a magnet wrapped in copper wire, which he pressed against the wounds. Katy started to protest, but Dade said, “There’s flecks of silver in the wounds. He can’t heal with them there. I can’t get them all, but it should be enough.”
Katy said, “Uh, Dade? Silver isn’t ferrous. It isn’t attracted to magnets.”
Dade shrugged and said, “Well, I guess Adrian’s going to die then,” and continued doing what he was doing.
Katy threw up her hands and walked away.
“So what’s going on with the… wolves? I assume there’s more of you?”
“A lot more. And all of them are very pissed at our friend here. They’re dropping the pretenses and going for the throat.”
He turned his head and looked at Katy. “That means you. You’re the only thing they have that can keep him in one place.”
Dade turned back to his work.
“Fantastic,” Katy sighed.
“They’re setting up a perimeter and getting ready for some very serious fighting.”
“And how did you get away from that unaccompanied. Last time I saw you, you were babbling and barely coherent.”
Dade said, “I’m very good at fooling people. And the last time you saw me was very peculiar in timing. Those moments still come, but I am very pleased to say they are fewer and very far between.”
“Moments?”
“A couple of doctors in a mental institution in the mountains have toyed around with my brain. One does not walk away from something like that without a few quirks.”
Dade looked at the wound and said, “Okay, that should be good. Can you bandage him up again? I’d do it but I have to get back. They won’t believe I’m not gone for much longer.”
“But you didn’t do anything except turn a rock into a rock!”
Dade smiled. “Just wait. You’ll see.”
He patted her on the shoulder and left the house.
Katy stared at the door for a while before locking it and turning to Adrian and saying, “I’m going to pass out and have very fantastical dreams about a far off land where people work in cubicles and crazy shit never happens.”
Katy found a blanket and spread it over Adrian’s body.
She kissed Adrian on the cheek, then curled up under an afghan in a recliner, and passed out almost immediately.